Research On The Wayfinding Signage System Of Wuhan City

The design of the wayfinding signage system is a kind of discipline which lies between the dimensional and three dimensional designing course as well as the intersection of the graphic design and environmental design. The wayfinding signage system of the urban areas is an integral part in the construction of the cities, hence it is of great significance for the development of the urban areas. Currently at home, the design for the wayfinding signage system is still in the initial phase , and there is little attention paid to it and few of people make analysis or research to it separately since the proportion of the wayfinding signage system in the buildings, squares or residential compounds is relatively small. Hence, the wayfinding signage system design at home develops slowly. For designers, we have to make up the lost part. With the consideration to functionality, artistic quality and innovativeness, the sense of the integrity of the designs would be strengthened and thus the wayfinidng signage system would be enabled to become an indispensable part of the environmental planning of the whole city.Wuhan, as the biggest city in the central China area, the environment of the urban area is relatively complicated. With the development of the economy and transportation, people's requirement for the environmental situation goes higher and higher. Based on the research method of combing theory with practice, this thesis borrows the experiences from the successful cases in developed countries and studies the status quo of the wayfinding signage system in Wuhan. Taking the pathfinding behavior as the start point, this paper elaborates the role played by the wayfinding signage system in the city space and discusses the significance of the multi-dimensional development of the wayfinding signage system for the city construction from the perspective of the cognitive psychology, environment design and visual communication.This paper has six chapters. The Chapter One elaborates the reason of the subject-choosing, research significance, the definition and development process of the wayfinding signage system. The Chapter Two studies the wayfinding signage system of Wuhan city and analyzes the detailed elements constituting the system, which provides the theoretical ground for the whole thesis. The Chapter Three and Four are the key sections of this paper. In the Chapter Three, from the perspective of the environmental cognitive psychology, this paper mainly analyzes the cause leading to the appearing of those signals– the pathfinding behavior of people. The Chapter Four points out the existing problems and solutions of the wayfinding signage system in Wuhan city based on the on-site investigation and research. The Chapter Five gives the specific designing proposal of the wayfinding signals,which provides the reference for the implementation of the proposal. The Chapter Six introduces the information interface design of the wayfinding signage system in Wuhan city, which presents the detailed designs of this system in Wuhan.